Al-Tiba9 Magazine Issue#2

EDITION 02

Alisa Aistova Uriel Ziv Azancot Anton Lefabi Andy Sowerby Monica Sousa Leszek Sikon

Chih Yang Chen Nour Hassan Crisia Miroiu Alves Ludovico Shahab Naseri Mariano Alvarez

Jonathan Irawan Anett Pรณsalaki Christian Neuman Charlie Wayne Chiara Sgatti Marilina Alvarez

2018

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Issue #2 Al-Tiba9 Art Magazine Visual Arts Copywriting DÁVID TORJAI Creative Design MO’ MOHAMED BENHADJ Graphic Design JONATHAN IRAWAN Operations & Distribution AL-TIBA9 TEAM Publication BARCELONA email : contact@altiba9.com instagram : @altiba9 Facebook : Al-Tiba9 Contemporary Art

Al-Tiba9 Art Magazine is an independent artist-run international publication which showcases experimental and progressive contemporary art, reflecting modern society and its environment, provoking conversation and action; fostering innovation and diversity of mediums which make today’s art scene so intriguing.

Al-Tiba9 Mag covers photography, paintings, visual art, music, film and performance. It covers Artists with a primary focus on contemporary visual art reflecting modern society and its environment.

The magazine includes features on art of 18 selected artists from around the globe, it aims to give spotlight and to provide a unique art space for artists. Unlike gallery spaces, it aims also to create a space where individual artists can freely express themselves and become media themselves. We engage the selected artists with our readers and followers everyday through our social media, website, digital and printed issues We also publish Biographies, interviews and studio visits with artists and curators who inspire us and our audience.

Curator MO’ MOHAMED BENHADJ (Algeria)

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Andy Sowerby 06

The Frozen People

Alisa Aistova Dysfunction 38

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Monica Sousa

Chih Yang Chen

(Des)fragmentação, Descampado

Parallelly Post Individual Prophecy

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Uriel Ziv Azancot

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Leszek Sikon

McGufin Eyes Wide Shut

Nour Hassan

Shell Tools

Water

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Anton Lefabi

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Matierès

Crisia Miroiu Untitled (disclaimer)

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Anett Pósalaki Gender 80 124

Alves Ludovico

Christian Neuman

Sulin, The Fuel For Life

The end of everything as you knew it

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Shahab Naseri

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My Mother

Charlie Wayne

Chiara Sgatti The White Spot

The Junk Food Last Supper

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Mariano Alvarez

Marilina Alvarez

Multidimensional Asymmetry

I DON’T WANT TO SAY ANYTHING BUT

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Jonathan Irawan Nacre

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Alisa Aistova

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DYSFUNCTION Alisa Aistova investigates human boundaries and transitional states, mutations, injuries and suppressed desires. In the center of her work there are always transformations, mental and physiological. Insanity, psychic transformation, obsessive neurosis, melancholy, rejection, anguish, fear, loneliness, violence, isolation, death and the desire for it.

Al-Tiba9 Art Magazine

NOVEMBER 18’ Please describe the intention behind your art. How do you successfully express this intention?

Where did you get your imagery from (What, If any, Sources did you use)?

I’m really curious about transformation of human psyche.

It is thrilling for me to investigate the state of the psyche when it is transformed under an influence of some factors leading to severe conditions and to investigate everything that may be associated with this. How loneliness distorts our consciousness: the consequences of social isolation, etc.

The questions I work with are largely personal, tabooed, or ignored - I want to draw attention to them. It is my personal quest to encounter and study and learn from the Shadow, as Carl Gustav Jung would call it. My intention is to contemplate myself and help others to fully comprehend these states of mind.

In a general, I get inspiration from my favorite artists and directors as I consume dozens of books and hours of world’s cinematographic classics every month – an important influence on the project was provided by the films of Van Sant and Bella Tarr.

My recent inspirations comes from artists such as Eva Hesse, Parajanov who is not a director in ordinary words, but a “modern artist”, an actionist, Munch, Frida, Boyce, Naumann, Bourgeois and many others.

Can you talk a little about your formative years as an artist?

Inspired by Bacon, Duchamp and Picasso I immersed myself in an open and experimental fine art photographic practice, striving to compare and explore the relationship within an image, in an attempt to create a feeling. I’ve devoted almost all of my work to the study of human boundaries and transitional states, mutations, injuries and suppressed desires. Now I’m learning art at London Central Saint Martins College..

Your work is about a mental transformation of a person, their internal state and work with the unspoken, an attempt to visualize internal psychological conditions and heavy feelings. It is a very deep research into oneself. What inspired this artistic expression?

My personal experiences, I guess, but I believe that’s true for any artist. I was lucky or unlucky enough to have some extreme and traumatic experiences in my life, which I always tried to make sense of in order to figure out the way to live with them and independent of them. It’s a really interesting question – if some experience in my life alters my internal state, brings overwhelming emotions. My way is to link between experiences, perceptions and emotions.

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You pose a number of interesting questions to the audience; how does social environment shape us, how does our personality form a tension with the environment? How is our psyche transformed by the state of an obsessive neurosis? This questioning can be disturbing for the viewer – as if you would keep a deep feeling hidden behind your personal life experience and project it then on the viewer. Can you talk about that this complex process?

There is indeed a lot of personal in my works due to the fact that i am my study object. Ultimately, i believe every artist first explores himself. So I try to look at processes in my mind in an honest and detached way.

In Russia, from where I’m from, there is a strong tradition to avoid and deny open and transparent discussion of psychological problems. In order to integrate socially I have to deny or hide everything, if I attend therapy or fight depression. The Situation changes slowly among the welleducated young generation, but it’s a minor fraction of society and there is still long way to go.

This state of affairs troubles me and generates my protest. I want to communicate through my works with the viewers. I don’t aim to bring beauty and harmony to my audience but to disturb, make aware about the viewers’ internal states and feelings.

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Your process includes documentation, advertising, personal remembering, public image, the object of expression.

In other works, you experiment with a mix of video art and photography to give a 3-dimensional shape to the mental side of your artistic productions. How can you describe that for our readers?

for reflection and inspiration. I consider the widest applications of images and materials that focus on photography, documentation, advertising, memory, public image, the object of expression, and then ask how these tools affect our perception of photographic art. I also use projectors to add additional layering in the creation of the object.

They say if you could be anything but an artist, don’t be an artist. What career are you neglecting right now by being an artist?

My work is more like arrangements than pictures in the conventional sense of the word, and it is both a tool and a research object. The expressive capabilities of a photography are also in my focus - how putting the picture in a different context gives it different meanings. My paintings made me seriously contemplate about whether my auxiliary method is really my main method. I also use my photographs a lot as sketches, as a basis

Was performance art an influence on your work or the way in which it was What is your favorite genre of music made? to listen to while painting?

I was a successful headhunter and IT manager in IT space in Russia, But nothing has the same importance and meaning for me as my art and being an artist. Not even close.

Yes, sure. I constantly feel the need to go Depends on my mood, often times it’s beyond 2D to create my first installation. some brit-pop, Muse, for example or something like Paul Oakenfold’s old As part of my previous research I attended tracks. a performative theater performance using screens and portable projectors to create a video or shoot live.

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What current series are you working on?

I’m working on project with Eugene Protasenko about philosophy and studies of the brain, consciousness and neurochemical foundations of human behaviour. This project is an intersection of science and art.

Do you have any upcoming shows or collaborations?

Yes, sure! I participated in the Moscow International Biennale of Young Art which ended recently. The closest upcoming events are two exhibitions in Italy in Rome and Liguria and the autumn projects of Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art. I’m also curating my personal project, which hopefully will be announced and shown in 2019.

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Uriel Ziv Azancot

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MCGUFIN EYES WIDE SHUT

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The core of Uriel Ziv Azancot’s interest lies in the thin line separating vision from castrated vision, light from darkness, movement which symbolizes life from immobility which means death. His desire is to try to understand and cast meaning into the process that occurs from the moment he looks at something to the moment he interprets it, the moment of reflection versus the moment of truth, assuming that the truth has many strange facets.

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NOVEMBER 18’ What kind of education or training helped you develop your skill set?

I studied cinema in an autodidact and obsessive way: when I decided at a young age that cinema fascinated me I created a list of directors from every country. I naturally started with French cinema, so if for example I decided to watch films by Godard I would sit and watch all his films from the first to the last including backstage and short films he had created at the start of his career. And I did the same with all the directors (and I do mean ‘all’) whose work is engraved in cinematic history. I subsequently studied cinema at a cinematic school and during this time realized that what I really wanted to do was video art and experimental cinema. I therefore commenced art studies, during which time I understood that what interests me in art is the combination of the screen and the object and the object and its surroundings. One could say that the breath and inspiration of ‘Nam June Paik’ is on me.

Let’s begin by talking about your relationship to sculpture, how you came to build your work in the way in which it has evolved. It seems that the discourse of your work is about identities that are constantly constructed and reconstructed, copied, pasted, transformed and transfigured in the various online media platforms in which we engage with, a connection between human and screen, a connection that is both physical as well as metaphysical. How did that come about?

As I already mentioned, my background is the moving picture i.e. the video cinema, etc. As a film and video artist I always missed the physical and powerful sense of space and the objects within it, and so in my work I try to cast movement into the object, where the movement can be expressed in a conceptual way, such as the movement of a body around the object, or as a sound and light movement. This obsessive need for movement led me eventually to the small screen, the smartphone screen, which nowadays can be found in the pocket of almost every person on earth. This screen in its physical and metaphysical essence is the embodiment of movement, and can exist in any place and time, the fingers constantly sliding on the glass, fingers that represent many different identities, with social agendas, identities that lead parallel lives in digital universes with metaphysical characteristics.

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NOVEMBER 18’ Is there a predetermined object language you want your artworks to embody? What do you want them to add up to? Because it seems that the choices and selections you make in the use of each material imply the construction of a live body based on a code. So what is the code?

I think that symbols of movement are very important to me and therefore I connect more to the meaning of the word ‘object’ and less to the classic word ‘statue’, because a statue essentially belongs to immobility. From a material point of view I have an affinity to cold industrial materials such as stainless steel, mirrors, and technological materials such as screens etc. When I am in the process of creating an art work, I try to combine the cold with the heat, where the cold is embodied in the industrial materials, and the heat is embodied in materials that are more organic. Another combination that fascinates me is the combination between temptation and aversion, which are essentially the basis of vision, where the ‘code’ itself exists in my inner need to create a forced dialogue between vision/observation and the castration of vision. This dialogue forms the conceptual ‘code’ for me and precedes the manifestation of a physical body in the form of an object in one space or another.

How do sound and light interact in this piece?

I will respond to this question in a general way. Sound and light preoccupy me because they contain motion and warmth; the video and the cinema are the pure incarnation of the movement created using these means, without which there is nothing. As a creator I am fascinated by the prospect of taking these means and “pouring” them into a passive object, so that in fact I “create” (in the full sense of the word) a ‘word’ whose meaning is the basis for the existence of life in the world.

Do you consider yourself a sculptor? Installation artist?

Or do you consider yourself an artist who works with what’s at hand? How can you describe your practice for our readers?

In truth I am not inclined to unambiguous definitions.

I consider myself an ‘antiquary artist’: I collect ideas and materials around me, some may materialize as sculptural objects whilst others may serve as installations. Materials and ideas have their own desires and I try to find the balance and move with them in a way that is critical on the one hand and free on the other.

Where did you get your imagery from (What, If any, sources did you use)?

As an artist, everything that exists in this world or in other worlds (physical metaphysical worlds, etc.) is a potential material that can lead to inspiration which may lead wherever it leads. When I look at the world I do not rule out anything, I try to view it in a clean and unprejudiced way, as a little boy, and having found something of interest I ask myself how can I pour into what I saw meaning that will lead to form. Technically I have hundreds of films, images and video tapes: from images of industrial materials to images from films that inspire me, I have digital materials that I collect on my mobile phone and on several computers and physical materials in the studio and at home. Like many artists I am compulsive hoarder.

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They say if you could be anything but an artist, don’t be an artist. What career are you neglecting right now by being an artist?

Unfortunately or to my delight I don’t forsake anything, I’m not really good at doing other things. Art has chosen me and so I live and breathe art from morning to the small hours of the night. I am constantly in a state of gathering ideas and materials or in a state of drawing, etc. I have a fantasy to live solely from my art, but at present I am forced to work in a clerical job that allows me to continue engaging with my ideas and also support my family to a certain extent.

What current project are you working on?

It’s a project I have been working on for the past 4 years, an installation in two parts for two spaces. It will contain a variety of motion-exhibiting objects with space aspects, some based on motion and light sensors and some containing screens and closed-circuit cameras. Unfortunately, I live in an environment that does not promote art and/or freedom of expression in any form. In addition, my installations combine technological materials that are quite expensive. So to move from sketches to a physical exhibition space I must secure the help of a body and/or the right person. Once I find them or they me...

I promise that magic will be revived.

What is your favorite genre of music to listen to while working?

I love listening to indie and electronic music. I’m currently listening to ‘Singularity’, Jon Hopkin’s recent and excellent album which sends you on a digital-spiritual journey and that’s the space I’m at right now.

Do you have any upcoming shows or collaborations?

There are several exhibitions that I am supposed to attend, in addition there is a new project that I have been working on for several months which involves sculpting performed by technology.

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Anton Lefabi

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MATIERÈS Anton Lefabi’s work is centered on repetition, obsession, irony and sacrifice. It is essentially based on a conceptual modus operandi which manifests itself in various thematic work series. Lefabi tries to shift people’s perception by investing most of his energy into developing a method of transcription which aims to let a work radiate a specific idea. The suitable form of expression is defined by the idea’s inherent mindset.

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Please describe the intention behind your art. How do you successfully express this intention?

The ultimate and universal artistic intention to me is to improve the world. On the one hand there is a personal intention: the profound inner desire to express something about ideas or issues without using written or spoken language. I believe in the potential of art as the most sustainable, uniting and interesting medium of reflection to translate, process and transmit the content and nature of ideas and concepts.

Within different work series I follow different strategies of intention. These intentions can be philosophical, political but also ironic in nature. I would like people who get in contact with my work to pause. Contemplating and empathizing with an idea and its influence on the world can lead to a process of redefinition on your own idea of this idea. I try to shift people’s perception by investing most of my energy and time into developing a method of transcription which aims to let a work radiate a specific idea.

Can you talk a little about your formative years as an artist?

Probably I am still in the middle of something called “formative years” but in general I consider large parts of my experience in life as my formation as an artist. Since the age of fourteen I’ve always been working on artistic projects.

Having a background in architecture, philosophy, music and art history always stimulated me and shaped my way of thinking. It’s as if I approached art from orbiting it.

The work « Matières » deals with the recording of time – by tracing as well as memorizing time using lines. It is an artistic-philosophic attempt to individually sense, observe and memorize time in a very self-aware way.

What inspired this artistic expression ?

Matières are the expression of nothing else but time. By concentrating on something which is visually not palpable not explicit - I kind of „rebooted“ my artistic output. Therefore I understand Matières as my artistic zero-point. Before getting to this non-intentional and non-inspired point, I spent a long time on waiting. I waited for nothing in particular. By simply letting enough time pass by you can experience somewhat like a passive state of being - where you perceive change without changing yourself. This is when I realized that you have to do nothing at all to comprehend the essence of time.

In this series you play a lot with composition of forms and lines. What I find personally compelling though, is that you take the viewer on a journey through life and as with circle rings in woodcuts, the line stands emblematically as the expression of the inevitable linearity of time. It’s life as a process that defines growth and change of a body on a scale of time and quantity. Can you talk about that?

The idea of time is change. Through time we perceive duration. Duration, in turn, generates room to manoeuvre within where change can happen. Without time life could never exist. It is this temporal dependency which in this context makes me think about the two philosophical terms of “inherence” and “accident”. For instance, the gradual emergence of vertical structures in Matières combines inherent and accidental properties and reveal the complexity of simultaneity. Of course, the moment in which I draw a single line is dedicated to this very line. But it is also and at the same time dedicated to something different which will only show its existence later on. « Matières » is defined by the highest calm and concentration. An uninterrupted line is drawn as straight as possible from one end of the picture to the other. How can you describe this creation process for our readers ?

The composition of these fragmented timelines derives from a ruminant work process. I try to draw an uninterrupted line as straight as possible from one end of the picture to the other. The next line is drawn as close as possible to the first line without intersecting. So on and so forth. Even if the first line appears to be drawn with extreme precision, it will never be absolutely straight. I have to accept irregularities and the absence of perfection. Every single deviation generates consequences. These imperfections radiate and are amplified throughout the following lines. Time takes its course – also in visual terms. Spatial and temporal interdependence manifests itself with the succession of lines.

Since there is a high degree of concentration needed to record the lines, the set of rules intensifies the performative act. The act of drawing a line becomes the exclusive conscious experience. Time loses itself in the line. This loss of time is symbolically transcribed to the medium at hand.

Everything else is neglected, which leads to a state of the here and now, where the moment dominates.

Where did you get your imagery from ? (What, if any, sources did you use ?)

The composition of these drawings and paintings is extremely simple. There was no need for external references or sources except the visualization of the actual idea of time. Matières are inherent images of the progression of time. Anybody could create them anytime, anywhere.

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You work a lot in series. Do you think this will always be the case?

Maybe. What I find convincing about working in series is that the basis of my creative process can rather be related to a topic or subject matter than to a subjective way of expression or my own formal style. I don’t want to prioritise style over an issue. Actually I am not even interested in developing a recognizable artistic style. If there was something which I would like to be identified with, it is the way in which I deal with ideas in general, or with a specific strategic approach. I don’t want to impose something like an artistic CI (corporate identity) on any kind of subject matter I deal with.

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They say if you could be anything but an artist, don’t be an artist. What career are you neglecting right now by being an artist?

I say if you could be anything but an architect, don’t be an architect.

What current project are you working on?

For more than a year I am working on a series of 56 portraits that deal with the thematic interconnection of power and hope. In a mixed drawing-painting process I portray contemporary personalities from politics and industry in highest positions of power. In some respects one could perceive this work as the antithesis or inverted sequel of Gerhard Richter’s “48 Portraits” from 1976.

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What was the main influence on your work or the way in which it was made?

- For me it rather seems to be a “manière de fonctionner”, a modus operandi that forms my work: a strong inherent impulse to reflection combined with reverie and sometimes idiosyncratic perceptions of certain ideas and concepts.

- Caring! I consider myself a very careful - maybe even vigilant - personality. It’s important to care about someone but also about something! I feel more and more the urge and inclination for empathy with situations or issues. Hard to describe, maybe it’s a kind of anthropomorphised view on the world.

- Being sensitive. I am a thin-skinned person who reacts very sensitive to external impact. I explore my ability to digest information, I allow myself to swallow input from the outside world and to translate it to my inner feelings. It’s a process of breaking down information, splitting it up into smaller chunks and rearranging it into some novel composition.

- Functioning slowly. I take my time for the things I do.

I do not always have to do something. I need breaks, time offs, inefficiency, periods of silence and loneliness..

- Infinite doubting! Or to quote Voltaire: “Le doute est désagréable, la certitude est ridicule.”

- Obsession.

- 9/11 What is your favorite genre of music to listen to while working?

It depends on the type of project I am working on.

When working on the Matières series, I either do not listen to music at all or to instrumental music (of almost any genre). In general I try to avoid multitasking. The textual-linguistic aspects of music may disturb me while working highly concentrated. During the creative process I prefer being alone with my work in a closed room and I often don’t even feel the need for the vocal presence of a singer. Although: Radiohead almost always works.

Do you have collaborations?

any

upcoming

shows

or

In collaboration with the City of Vienna and the artist Gerald Straub I am working on the realization of a performative and interactive community project at a market area in the outskirts of Vienna. Through various artistic interventions we will try for several weeks to revitalize the area. One specific aim is to reconnect the market stall operators by integrating them in diverse creative processes, and to build up a new sense of solidarity and togetherness. In this case art acts as social catalyst.

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Andy Sowerby

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THE FROZEN PEOPLE Sowerby’s films often alternate between narrative, story driven, abstract or expressive work following his instincts, Whether searching through video archives, collaborating with writers and actors, or experimenting with abstractions of light, he’s always starting his process of discovery from varied points. Sometimes it’s a technique, a competition or theme he examines. He’s comfortable working in the abstract realm and leaving space for personal interpretation.

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Please describe the intention behind your art. How do you successfully express this intention?

My main intentions are to evoke an emotion in the viewer, deliver something experiential and ideally create a story that resonates with people. If I can do any one of those things I’ll be happy.

Beyond that I enjoy trying to push my creative boundaries by experimenting with different techniques. I express this intention by creating work that moves people. To do this my primary aim is to forge a connection between the viewer and the subject matter. Which could be either the characters in the film or, if the work is abstract, then I hope the viewer connects and reacts to the entire aesthetic.

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Can you talk a little about your Your work has an impact on how time formative years as an artist? is related to our choice. Time can be perceived on many different scales My “art life” began at school when depending on our perception of we got a new art teacher who inspired things. It can define our personality, me to move beyond conventional our image and identity - like you are representation, as we had been showing with your series of dynamic/ previously taught, and embrace static portraits. What inspired this expressionism and abstraction. After artistic expression? this I applied to an art foundation course at Bournemouth University, UK. During I was working on ideas for an entry for this course we did a short film workshop a competition, with the limitation of only and this excited me so much that I made using the public domain clips available it my focus for the rest of the year and from the Pond5 Public Domain Project. subsequently applied to film schools As I was researching the archive I was across the country. I got accepted into scrolling down the pages and saw all the film school at Newport, UK. There these faces staring out at me. I noticed my graduation film ‘Light + Sound’ the faces were frozen until I hover my won a couple of awards and screened mouse over them and press play when internationally. After that I eventually they would suddenly spring to life. The moved to London and began working idea for the concept, especially the within the film industry, and then, as they flickering of the images in my film, came say, the rest is history… very quickly inspired by my initial reaction to the archive. I then developed the voice

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over and it got me thinking: What does it mean to take a photograph? What is the purpose of documenting? When does it end?

Where did you get your imagery from (What, if any, sources did you use)?

For ‘The Frozen People’ I found all the images in the Pond5 Public Domain Project, as this was stipulated by the competition as mentioned above.

I often enter competitions as I enjoy working within set parameters. I find it pushes me into new areas of exploration that I wouldn’t necessarily have chosen.

There is something to be said for creativity under ‘restraint’, I find it requires a level of ingenuity and resourcefulness, it’s all about having an original reaction and being able to realise ideas quickly.

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NOVEMBER OCTOBER 18’ Your work is very visual, plays with composition of the images and videos. What I find personally most compelling though, is that you split the dimension of time with these black and white portraits, which capture strong expressions that invite the viewer to dig deeper in people’s memory (the past), but then you project them in another dimension (actual present) by making all of them “The Frozen People”. Can you talk about that?

It’s fascinating to read your take on the film and what you took away from it. I think a lot of this comes from the subjective nature of time and memory. I guess by bringing the viewer’s attention to the fact of the people’s death (in the past) I hopefully get the viewer to contemplate their own past, present and their future and even their eventual death?

Hopefully raising questions about what might happen to them after their death? What might happen to the images of them? Will their image be resurrected one day, to create a connection across time?

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Your production includes a specific portrait selection process. How would you describe that process to our readers?

My selection process was broad at first, selecting all portraits I could find in the archive, especially looking for strong faces and expressions. Then to narrow it down, I went through an intuitive process where I watched the portrait clips and if I felt an emotion, which could be sadness or happiness or anything else, then I would select that clip. In this process, and in most film editing, you as the editor have to act as a surrogate audience and gauge your responses to the film with that hope that the audience will have a similar response.

The first image of the film I always find particularly striking as the light catches the man’s glasses and you cannot see his eyes. I feel it creates something almost otherworldly and intriguing at the start of the film. Then I believe many of the portraits are made more dramatic as they are looking down the lens, right at the viewer. This direct connection between audience and subject is something quite uncommon in films and the rarity makes it striking.

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Your questioning about the sociological sense of freedom, politics and religion has a direct impact on the way you construct your artistic production. Could you tell us about your artistic research of being frozen then unfrozen, free to move once again? Can your art go through political and religious paths to reach the truth? How far can you go with your art?

What was the main influence on your work or the way in which it was made?

To be honest, I didn’t do any research for this project. I only had a few days to make this film as the deadline for the competition was imminent, and I had used much of my previous time working on unused ideas. The conception and production of the work was done quickly, in quite an intuitive way.

They say if you could be anything but an artist, don’t be an artist. What career are you neglecting right now by being an artist?

There was no direct political or religious angle for the work. If there is anything in it for the viewer then I feel that is coming from their subjective viewpoint on the work and the world.

As for the actual idea of being frozen and unfrozen, I’m only referring to it in the sense of their image being unfrozen but through the connection the viewer makes to the person in the photo perhaps that person is in some way really unfrozen and their “soul” becomes alive again, even if only for the briefest moment. I’m not stating anything specific about an existence of life after death, but that might come from the viewers beliefs or experiences. In my opinion, all art is highly subjective and so much of how we engage with art, and all the world around us, is built on our experiences and self-beliefs.

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I can’t say there was any direct influence I drew from consciously. I guess I could say the main influence was the material itself. I just worked in an intuitive way with material with the aim to evoke an emotion in the audience and raise questions of time, photography and mortality.

Probably being a musician, but that’s basically an artist too. So if I have to be something else then maybe a pilot like my father was. I think the idea of soaring above the clouds is still quite romantic and beautiful. It’s amazing that humans can fly.

What project are you currently working on?

I’ve just finished a short film based around a painter on the last day on Earth, which I’m finalising right now. I’ve also got some other ideas for short drama films, and I’m working on scripts for these. I’m also working on a collaboration with a musician to create an installation and performance that explore the different layers of our skin, its cycles of regeneration, and its reactive tendencies such as infection and abrasions.

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What is your favourite genre of music to listen to while working?

I listen to a lot of different music generally but when working I usually listen to instrumental ambient, minimal or electronic musicians and also film soundtracks which I often find especially emotive and good to work to.

Do you have any upcoming shows or collaborations?

My short film The Jump is showing at Court MĂŠtrage Festival 2018, France.

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Monica Sousa

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(DES) FRAGMENTAÇÃO, DESCAMPADO

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Monica Sousa’s art focus on spaces that emerge from late capitalism, even though sometimes, there is a movement of nature that re-colonized this same place that was intervened by human hands, an entropy that originates the organic development of nature.

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NOVEMBER 18’ Please describe the intention behind your art. How do you successfully express this intention?

My artwork mostly consists of showing people what is wrong with society, with what surround us. By this I mean that my photographs always have an ironic side to them because even though I want to give them a more serious connotation I also want to give them a playful touch. Photography is my way of communicating and stating that something is wrong even though we cannot see what it is at first sight because it has become so common nowadays. “Fragmentação do Can you talk a little about your formative years as an artist?

I always knew that I wanted to be an artist: In high school my field of study was Visual Arts and I was really undecided between drawing or photography, but then, photography spoke louder. I got my degree in Photography and this year I finished the first year of the Master Degree in Aesthetics and Art Studies - Photography and Cinema. Besides that, I still have a passion for drawing and when I have free time I do some Your photographic project starts from the inspiration of the concept of non-places, described by the French Anthropologist Marc Augé. Could you describe this concept and what inspired your artistic expression?

Over the last decades we have witnessed a great evolution in the most diverse areas, essentially in technology, and society itself has been changing and being manipulated without having this notion. This obsession with space then corresponds to a time when the world is “experienced.” Marc Augé describes a non-place as a “place” where people are just passing by. In other words, it is a place constructed and idealised by human beings, where we can do everything in a short time. The intersection between industry and social transformation has led to a stylization of the banal and an objective culture of consumption that has transformed the relationship between humans and ourselves, making us more and more the product of this culture.

This is a contemporary subject that we do not think much about, because, as I said before, it is so common that we do not realize what is happening. So, this artwork serves to show society what we cannot see, as if it were a mirror.

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Where did you get your imagery from (What, If any, Sources did you use)?

My images come from my biggest inspirations: nature and music, and possibly everything around us. All our senses leave us memories, even if only subconsciously, and I think that many of the ideas emerge from these memories and daily absorptions. In this work, I used the idea of nature and its relation to architecture, or rather, the nature of the human being without any consent. Sometimes we just think of ourselves and what is beneficial to us, leaving behind what really shifts back.

What current project are you working on?

I am currently working on a project called “fragmented perception” that consists of the very idea of playing, ironically, with the manipulation of modern times and a fake reality.

Photography has always been referred to as a factual document, but can we believe in everything that we see?

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Architecture represents a human hand’s intervention on nature. In your work, we can see some contemporary geometrical plans that have been imposed by architects and in the case of “Descampado#1” dominate the space, while in others, like “Descampado#2” and “Focus” nature imposes its curves and regenerates the invaded space.

Could you talk about this reversed relation between architecture and natural development? How do you relate this to the entropy described previously?

Once nature is altered, it recomposes itself, causing an entropy effect, this means that there is an advance of the territory itself.

In “Focus”, in fact, nature had been completely destroyed. The photograph is captured in a quarry and we have no trace of nature there. Human beings destroy a landscape to obtain resources, when nature itself provides them. There remains a landscape that gravitates between a distant past and a potentially catastrophic present.

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NOVEMBER 18’ What advice would you give someone looking to pursue a career in conceptual photography today?

It is really difficult to survive just as a photographer or in any other type of art, at least in Portugal. To have a career in conceptual photography we must do continuous work and not give up once we take the first NO, in a contest or in a gallery. We have to know how to accept criticism so that we can improve our work and it is very important to have support from other artists, mainly from former teachers. It is they who often give us strength to create, not letting us stop believing in our work.

Do you have any upcoming shows or collaborations?

In the last months I had a few collective exhibitions in Lisbon to show other recent works that I have done. Now I regularly show my portfolio and participate in contests that could open more doors to the art world.

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Leszek Sikon

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SHELL TOOLS

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Making hand-forged knives and custom objects in only the highest quality materials is the core of Leszek Sikon’s practice, precision in craft is fundamental. Forging is an incredible process of transformation that allows him to create an artwork from any piece of available steel. Material culture is also crucial to his practice; the right piece of stock, with the right history, can really reinforce the message his artwork attempts to convey.

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At what point did you first realize that you could make a career out of your sculptures?

I came to United Kingdom 12 years ago looking for work, managed to find one quickly and after couple years I managed to become a manager in one of the shops in London, I was earning decent money but this work did not satisfy me, every day was almost the same and that had really made me feel exhausted. So 5 years ago I decided to go back to education. I was looking for a place that I can work with my hands and make something that would last, it was pure chance that I stumbled on the Hereford College Artist Blacksmith course. After attending the open day and having my first experience in forging I decided that this is what I want to do from now, I handed my notice to my manager and started my education.

What kind of education or training helped you develop your skill set?

I’ve attended Artist Blacksmith course in Hereford College of Arts where I finished my BA degree. I learned how to be a blacksmith under Adrian Legge, Peter Smith, Chris Blythman, Ambrose Burn, but most importantly Delyth Done who is working extremely hard as a lead tutor of my course.

Your work is about transforming tools of destruction into tools of creation through a cyclical process.

What inspired this artistic expression?

Couple years back I went to a blacksmith meet-up in Wojciechowo, Poland. There I have had the pleasure to meet other smiths, among them 85 year old master Józef Kułak who told me about how after the war they used to make tools from any steel scrap they could find, among it old shells. That picked my interest and I started to read about it. It seems that this had happened for centuries; whenever the war started, fighting powers take church bells, large railings, gates, anything that was made out of steel and smelt it down to create weapons and ammunition. And after the war people would have to find the way to rebuild, good qualities tools and steel were hard to find so village blacksmiths would do their best to create them with what they could find.

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According to your statement, modern designers don’t have many options to change the shape of a blade of the kitchenware that we use today since in most cases it is simply the most efficient. You redesign daily use tools to find a perfect balance between modern design and everyday practicality, in a way giving the tools another form of reality.

Can you talk about this process?

As a blacksmith a big part of my practice is making my own tools, I’m proud to say that most of my hand tools I use I made myself. Certain shapes perform better at certain tasks, the hammer or a knife need to have a certain shape and weight so you would not use more than necessary strength. For me this is one of the beauty of hand tools I can go to a museum and recognise the tools of my trade immediately. But it does not mean that tools need to just perform their task well, I noticed that on couple occasion I would, even though they were still working well, discard tools that I made before and made myself a new set just because, as I become a better blacksmith, I could make them look better. It seems that the same applies to many of my friends in different fields.

I enjoy working with tools that are good looking and I think I can make a better quality work thanks to those tools. This is why I decided to focus my practice on tool making. I want to deliver best possible tools that would exceed in performance but will also look beautiful, so the people that would use them could make the best possible dishes, sculptures etc.

What skills as a sculptor do you think have really made you a success in your art career?

I’m not afraid to take chances, I moved when I was 20 to different country to look for work, quit a well paid job to be a blacksmith and probably scared my tutors with my idea of forging old ammunition into tools.

What are your favorite things about being an artist?

The community is what I like the most. I was able to meet many interesting people thanks to my sculptures and tools, every one of these meetings opens new possibilities for new interesting projects and collaborations.

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What current projects are you working on?

At the moment I’m working on a couple new lines of knives and some wood working tools, and I started to design a new sculpture inspired by the book Stalingrad by Antony Beevor.

It’s still a long way before it’s finished but I hope it to be better than my “Shell Tools”.

What is your favorite genre of music to listen to while working?

As you can image a blacksmith workshop is not the most quiet place, I usually have BBC1 radio on, but once the power hammer and machines are on, you can’t hear it.

Do you have any upcoming shows or collaborations?

I’m working with a friend of mine that specialises in 3D printing on a new range of knives. I won’t go into details since it will spoil the surprise but I think they will be great.

Also I plan to work with a goldsmith that would help me with some gold inlaying on one of my “Leaf” series knives.

Also I’ll be a part of Tower of London Good Food show, and Handmade in Kew later this year.

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Chih Yang Chen

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PARALLELY POST INDIVIDUAL PROPHECY

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Chih Yang Chen works always communicate speculative concepts through subtle symbols. He focuses on exploring the possibilities of subtle relationships that occur between individuals.

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NOVEMBER 18’ Please describe the intention behind your art. How do you successfully express this intention?

I am a very sensitive person, who always focuses on the relationship and connection between individuals. I had depression before, which made me lonely and hard to make connections with others. I didn’t know how to deal with other people, neither how to deal with myself. I didn’t know how to socialize, how to express feeling, how to communicate. Because of the depression, I noticed that individuals without the abilities to develop relationships with others can never be completed.

To me, “Relationships” do not exist naturally. There should be some reasons that make the relationships existed, which I am highly focused on. Since I cannot make connections with others as easy as taking a breath, I pay more attention to what develops the connection and what makes the connection changed. I want to make these “Relationships” and “Connections” accessible through my artworks.

Relationship and connection are always the subjects of my artworks. To begin with, I have to clarify the relationships I focus on. Where do they exist? How are they influenced?

What influences them? How do they change the original individuals? Then I find a persuasive perspective to debrief the subject and develop inspiration, creativity, aesthetic within the context. I really care about symbols, only when I really know what I want to communicate can I create the context and choose appropriate symbols, and make the artworks accessible to spectators.

What kind of education or training helped you develop your skill set?

During the two years at the Royal College of Art, I kept evaluating my position. I experimented with different media, forms and techniques, tried to find the one that most strongly relates to me. I was attracted to moving images, films and new technology. As the result, my graduation projects combined short films and 3D printed objects. I studied Social development and Advertisement in college, and I was a freelance graphic designer before I studied at RCA. I learned most of the skills and techniques by myself. At RCA, there are a lot of workshops which provide skills training. I can learn everything I want if I have enough time. Besides, students are really talented, I gained a lot from my classmates and friends, no matter the skill set or mindset.

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The project “Parallels Post Individual Prophecy” is about human behavior ignoring the planet, this egotistical relation that’s more interested in the self than the environment. How did you turn this artistic inspiration into a photographic project?

I was studying speculative design when creating the project. I realized there should be a speculative platform for the concept and value of this project, which provided more possible ways to communicate and question the spectators. Therefore, I started a short fiction and transformed it into a timetable using year as the unit of time. Then I created a series of graphic narratives based on the timeline. However, during the process, I found what I really want to do is “warning” rather than “narrating”. I wanted a metaphorical warning, which is spiritual and beyond the scope of understanding. What came to my mind is the huge black stele in 2001: A Space Odyssey, which is the symbol of technology, unknown and future. It also seems like the metaphor of the spiritual power from higher dimension consciousness. As a result, I turned the fiction into a prophecy and printed it on a black stele. Also, I collaborated with a Printmaking student, Zilin Lin, for a series of seven monoprints, which was inspired by higher dimension consciousness, and tried to communicate the relationship between the consciousness and human beings. The project turned into a prophecy installation which consisted of the prophecy stele and prints and saved as the photography records.

Your work questions humanity about its synchronization with the planetary and the cosmic consciousness, about the infinite size of the universe where our planet is considered just a tiny unit. Could you explain your artistic research about this?

It’s all began from the relationship between humans and the planet, which seems that humans keep consuming and the earth keeps tolerating. I researched the relationship between humans and the planet, most of the results are about environmental issues. However, I saw a term called Planetary Consciousness, which reminded me that Plato has said the Earth is a huge living creature, and also reminded me of Final Fantasy VII. Planetary Consciousness means human beings are members of a planetary society of Earth as much as they are members of their nations, provinces, districts, islands, cities or villages. I focus on researching the subject about the consciousness of the planet, cosmic and other inorganic substance. These are the results: Gaia Theory by James Lovelock, Water Has Memory by Benveniste, and a beautiful project “The Future Will just Have to wait” by Alice Theodorou, and a book “The Future of The Mind” written by Michio Kaku. In “The Future of The Mind”, Michio Kaku said consciousness is the basis of the universe.

Since the subject is abstract and spiritual, I needed the context which can make my spectators more open-minded. Therefore, I decided to create a speculative platform for my subject to communicate a future in which human memories melt in the ocean, co-existing with the planet. The higher dimension consciousness (The Planet) records this future, reproduced to a prophecy beyond the time dimension.

As a result, I developed the work to the prophecy installation and finally the photography records. My artistic research combines paper researching and hand-making.

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Your process includes photography, typography, sculpture, graphic design, short films and other media and techniques.

How can you describe your complex artistic production and technique for our readers?

I will describe myself as a cross-disciplinary artist. Since I am a selftaught graphic designer/visual artist, I won’t limit my imagination by the skill set or artistic styles. When starting a new project, I put everything out in the beginning, such as inspirations, ideas and intention. Then I will organize what I want to communicate, who is my audience, try to find a persuasive perspective to cut through all the reference. This process can be researching, drawing, meditation, or keep doing small works to lead me forward. After I build up the content and feel that the work has meaning for myself, I proceed to the creating process. Even my artistic production is multivariate, they are all based on visual symbols. I love symbols, and I am highly interested in metaphor. Most of my works have metaphorical or symbolic meanings. I put symbols on various media, and I’m always satisfied with the result.

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“Humans can only confess to Something rather than Somebody” discusses the indescribable connections between humans and objects, especially when people are suffering from extremely painful and harsh emotions and it is impossible to tell anybody else about how one feels. However, people still need to confess to something. What is the relationship between this work and “Parallels Post Individual Prophecy”? Both projects are pointing to the same “Source”. What does source mean in your work? Could it be material and spiritual at the same time regarding your two projects?

Both these two projects talk about the relationships between individuals and external issues, but one is macroscopic, and the other is microscopic. “Parallels Post Individual Prophecy” is about the relationship between the humans’ community and the planet. The work provides the prophecy reproduced from the relationship to each individual as the warning. “Humans can only confess to Something rather than Somebody” talks about the internal struggling of the individuals. Since the individuals cannot make connections with others because of internal issues, they build up stronger connections with the objects around them which can be people, communities, the society, the world, or spiritual issues. They both talk about the same “Source”— relationship and connection. When individuals have trouble building up balanced connections with external units, they may be fragile or distorted, and need to be stopped (stopped by the prophecy).The relationship between humans and objects is material and spiritual at the same time. The relationship between the human community and the planet is spiritual. The prophecy provided by the planet consciousness is material and spiritual. The photography records materialize the relationships between individuals and the planet. The “Source”, relationship and connection, are the subjects I keep working on.

Your process includes photography, typography, sculpture, graphic design, short films and other media and techniques. How can you describe your complex artistic production and technique for our readers?

I will describe myself as a cross-disciplinary artist. Since I am a self-taught graphic designer/visual artist, I won’t limit my imagination by the skill set or artistic styles. When starting a new project, I put everything out in the beginning, such as inspirations, ideas and intention. Then I will organize what I want to communicate, who is my audience, try to find a persuasive perspective to cut through all the reference. This process can be researching, drawing, meditation, or keep doing small works to lead me forward. After I build up the content and feel that the work has meaning for myself, I proceed to the creating process. Even my artistic production is multivariate, they are all based on visual symbols. I love symbols, and I am highly interested in metaphor. Most of my works have metaphorical or symbolic meanings. I put symbols on various media, and I’m always satisfied with the result.

They say if you could be anything but an artist, don’t be an artist. What career are you neglecting right now by being an artist?

Game Designer or Game Developer. I love games, even plan to make a series of projects themed with games. To me, games are similar to artworks, both need to adjust details and symbols carefully to lead the players (spectators) into the content. No matter games or artworks, they have their own life after we finish the creating process. So I will be a game designer or game developer if I am not an artist.

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What current series are you working on?

I am working on two related moving images, which is about how individuals deal with their digital personality in this internet community. The project talks about individuals becoming flat, fragmental and tagged in the digital generation. However, individuals have to over-emphasize themselves to be eyecatching in this situation. As a result, individuals all look similar but exaggerated.

AR and VR are good for the subject. I am now learning the related technic. Will apply them in the series works in the future.

What is your favorite genre of music to listen to while working?

Lo-fi and Jazz Hop. I love the looped rhythm when working, can make me concentrate.

Do you have any upcoming shows or collaborations?

I have some upcoming collaborations, but they are confidential for now. I just finished a collaboration with a jewellery designer a month ago. Her works are related to paranoia about heat and another collaboration with a fashion designer creating patterns related to sex and intimacy, which were printed as fabrics and used on his clothes. I am now focusing on commercial works and personal artworks, while looking for exhibitions and collaborations opportunities.

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Nour Hassan

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WATER

Nour’s inspiration is derived from mundane situations, experiences and thoughts. As Louise Bourgeois declares “Art is not about art. Art is about life, and that sums it up”.

Nour Hassan’s process is mostly informed by an idea, once established, she explores executing it without limiting herself to a style or brushstroke.

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Please describe the intention behind your art. How do you successfully express this intention?

My aim is to have a conversation with the viewer, to make them feel or think something. If I am not able to achieve this, then I don’t consider the work successful. I have no magic formula. But one of the ways is to be very, very honest with myself, when I can do that, then almost always I know I will connect with at least one viewer. That to me is success.

Can you talk a little about your formative years as an artist?

I was painting commissioned works only. After doing that for a few years, I decided to focus on work I wanted to produce for the public. It became more important to produce art that matters to me, than to just get paid.

Your paintings are mostly portraits and in this series, your subjects are under water. Your process starts by taking photographs, and then you paint them to represent reality in your own way. Could you describe this process? Based on your work, how does painting point to different focus than photography?

Correct, I begin with a photoshoot that captures what I want to say, then I produce the painting. I’m obsessed with detail; detail that can only be observed using a photo reference. When I paint from life, I am not able to focus so much on detail, the model moves and the light changes. I am also too much or a realist to imagine detail or create fantasy. “How does painting point to different focus than photography?” of course this has been an ongoing question since that start of photorealism, I can only answer it with more questions. Does a photograph have the same impact as a painting? If I was to paint an impression of what I see from life, does that make me a better artist? Why paint from life when you can just take a photo of it – why paint at all?

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How do you construct your photography to reach this difference? Where did you get your imagery from (What, If any, sources did you use)?

In photography you get effects that you can’t get in lifepainting, for example; pixelation, blurring, fisheye lens, etc.

When taking a photo, I am making a conscious decision to include certain effects, then I include these effects in my painting because they support my concept. For example, in the water series, the detail of the water ripples/reflections can only be studied using a photo reference. My imagery is my own, I do the photoshoot, it’s all part of the artwork.

What current series are you working on?

I am continuing with the water series What is your favorite genre of music to listen to while working?

Blues. But lately its been podcasts or audiobooks.

Do you have any upcoming shows or collaborations?

Once I complete the water series I would like to put together a show, I’ll keep you updated!

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Crisia Miroiu

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UNTITLED (DISCLAIMER)

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The creation of the project was inspired by the accidental finding of three amateur photographs representing a family lunch party in Communist Romania.

Crisia Miroiu questions the traditional understanding of photography as a means of representing reality and of the photographer as a conveyer of truth; and further explores the space between reality and its representation, as well as the photographer’s role.

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The creation of the project “Disclaimer” is inspired by finding three amateur photographs of a family lunch party in Communist Romania, your native country. How do you turn this photographic project into an artistic inspiration?

Please describe the intention behind your art. How do you successfully express this intention?

Either there is no initial intention, or I am not successful at it. I begin at a certain point, I end up at an all different one. However, looking back, one can only acknowledge the intention behind my art, enticing it, guiding it, as an Ariadne’s thread.

Can you talk a little about your formative years as an artist?

For a time, I was jealous of artists who could speak about their formative years. I always felt that I cannot quite yet talk about it, that I cannot fully grasp it, fully understand it. That it is somehow too early, that I am still at my beginnings. Lately, I realized how lucky I am for such a rich and beautiful journey, for the rare chance of unceasingly learning and developing and growing myself. I also have the tremendous opportunity to work under the mentoring of Susan Best, brilliant art historian and curator, and I couldn’t be more grateful. My formation has just begun.

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It was at a flea market where I found them. A gypsy woman asked a tremendous price for them while yelling at me: “They are fam-i-ly photos! Fam-i-ly! They are priceless!” I left initially but couldn’t get them out of my mind. I went back and paid and said to myself: “Now you have to turn them into something really priceless.”politics.

Your process includes photography, typography, notes, graphic design, mixing different mediums and exploring new techniques, like sketching a research plan mostly in black and white representing the past and the present, the black and white sensations. How can you describe this artistic production and technique for our readers?

The planning is the wandering. The back and forth. The trial and error. The drifting away and the returning. On the ferry, I would send messages to myself on what needs to be done next. But the breakfast leak, and the phone gets soaked in almond milk and wouldn’t turn on.

There are many notes, and prints, and silly sticky post-its, and drafts. There are all those ideas that I am writing down and following up with, till it all turns into scrawling and doodling and I cannot make any sense of it anymore. Then, I start all over again.

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Your work questions the traditional understanding of photography as a means of representing reality and of the photographer as a conveyer of truth; it further explores the space between reality and its representation, investigating both the ‘material’ and ‘virtual’ potential of the images and testing out their representational force as it subjects them to similar, equalizing processes of reproduction. Could you explain the shared role between memory and time in this process?

It is precisely the play of memory and time that represents the matter at stake here. There are all these tensions inbetween ‘reality’, ‘truth’, ‘material’ and ‘virtual’; and there is the ubiquitous idea that a photograph represents a moment of time that, once captured, does not conform to an existing reality anymore. The dimension of photography that struggles against the loss of memory cannot (yet!) be expelled. But what is left to be archived and preserved? Of what is this memory? What is it that we lost?

They say if you could be anything but an artist, don’t be an artist. What career are you neglecting right now by being an artist?

Who’s they? I never heard of this. I don’t dare calling myself an artist (that’s what we all say, righty right?) but there is definitely nothing that I neglect right now by pursuing an artistic career. Only an artistic career can be neglected by pursuing any other career. Art is my faith. It stands for all security, all money, all home, all nights out and beach days, all family, that any other path could have brought with.

What current series are you working on?

There are several series that I currently work on. Most significantly, I am creating a body of work that exploits Great War imagery and surveys key concepts related to the representation of war and trauma in contemporary contexts.

What is your favorite genre of music to listen to while painting?

Jazz jazz jazz! All that jazz!

Do you have any upcoming shows or collaborations?

I will be part of the next ‘Scribble it Down’ workshop and exhibition. Founded by Einat Moglad in 2013, it brings together artists from various practices to create communal works of art. An international, digital collaboration, ‘Scribble it Down’ challenges ideas of collective ownership, connectivity, participatory creative practice.

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Alves Ludovico

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SULIN, THE FUEL FOR LIFE

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The super-complexity drives Alves Ludovico’s fascination through his own work, he enhances the limits of his own perception and comprehension. Ludovico’s creations represent a personal case study, a segment from the super-complexity that he sorts out and where he finds the tools for meaning and decision making.

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Please describe the intention behind your art. How do you successfully express this intention?

My work stands as a reaction to my surrounding environment and everyday experiences, often, they figure a traumatic experience, a critical view or a prediction. Analysing familiar surroundings through my artwork seems to allow me to develop action tools for a better understanding of the world’s complexity and problems. My artwork has a strong narrative component with that I hope to be capable of immersing the viewer into speculative scenarios, where I share my analysis and action tools.

Can you talk a little about your formative years as an artist?

I am currently mastering in contemporary design at Aalto University in Finland. I hold a BA in Industrial design from the University of Evora where I got to learn the essence and rules of pragmatic design. Throughout my academic path, I had received a mobility Grant BA, ArtEZ Institute of the Arts in Holland where I rediscovered design as an intellectual tool.

I also did one year of master’s programme in product and spatial design in Oslo national academy of arts in Norway.

Your work is very graphic and related to human identity and world industry. How do you turn this to an artistic inspiration?

Human’s individual actions are the defining factor of human identity. The industrial world is a good case study to understand the values behind the actions and the world’s organization.

Where did you get your imagery from (What, If any, Sources did you use)?

Family workshops were my childhood playground. Shapes, colors, functions, details and tools drove me to a fascination for seeing projects growing. Later on, I just got amazed by the object’s inherent strength.

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NOVEMBER 18’ Your work plays with the placement of the images, destruction of the image, interaction between advertising and social research all with very expressive colors and visuals. You also put yourself into your work, becoming an object in yourphotographs – like to keep you visual work as much closer to the audience as it is to you personally, to share your personal live experience through “Sulin, The Fuel For Life”. Can you talk about that these complex combinations?

I like to keep my concepts tight with my own experience otherwise I could not consider them meaningful, without meaning I am unable to develop a concept. I attempt to engage viewers by sharing my personal strengths and vulnerabilities, building upon that an intimate and meaningful dialogue. Understanding and compassion are triggered by familiar thoughts.I hope viewers can identify themselves with my personal stories. “Sulin, The Fuel For Life” among other things represents a claim for social space for diabetics and people with other disorders. As a diabetic person I have not been always comfortable to administer insulin in public, many times I felt observed by judging eyes. Not only because of the act itself but because I need to undress some body part when I do it. Nakedness is so many times normalized in perfume advertising but not always correctly judged in my medical need. Acknowledged dialogue is crucial to normalize medical treatment and redefine social spaces reasonably.

Your process includes photography, graphic design, mixing different marketing tools and exploring new techniques that are not traditional in photography.

In other works, you combine advertising notions from the past and the present, the black and white sensations with some discrete colors. How can you describe that for our readers?

“Sulin, The Fuel For Life” is a perfume 99,5% Insulin and 0,5% secret element made perfume that can be experienced. It also comprehends a physical dimension, a perfume flask designed to convey considerations. The chosen language to advertise it is like a hack from the perfume commercials, black and white is many times used to romanticise a cinematographic sphere. Sulin’s posters are black and white except the flask itself, the idea is to promote the concept and normalise the user.

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You’ve mentioned that your project “Sulin, The Fuel For Life » creates a bridge between the medical and perfumery world. How do the public integrate your art into their life?

Insulin is for diabetics a ‘’fuel for life’’ and for that reason we value it. A few years back a perfume that uses the slogan ‘’fuel for life’’ was released. I guess we do use wicked advertising that delivers and consequently creates inadequate values.

The diabetic population would be the 3rd biggest nation in the world if all the diabetics people are to be gathered as one country, according to the Health Word Organization.

We represent as big a market as the perfumery. Worldwide there are many diabetic people that do not have access to medical services to control the disease. Sulin is a fragrance that seeks to open discussion on smelly issues.

Was commercial art an influence on your work or the way in which it was made?

It is. I have been trying to mimic the same “fishing baits” used in advertising to convey considerations.

They say if you could be anything but an artist, don’t be an artist. What career are you neglecting right now by being an artist?

Probably a nurse or somewhere in health care. After I got the diabetes diagnosis my family though it would be the best for me.

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What current series are you working on?

I am taking into account my own relation with sugar and the fact that as a diabetic person sugar is a poison that harms my body. From this fact, the foundational statement of the proposal takes shape from the desire and will reconvert sugar into a building and constructive material.

What is your favorite genre of music to listen to while working?

While I work I like to listen music which blends classical and electronic music.

Do you have any upcoming shows or collaborations?

I will be part of a group exhibition ‘’ Emoveo” during Helsinki design week in September. In November, I am holding a solo exhibition in Helsinki at Kallio Stage.

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Shahab Naseri

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MY MOTHER In today’s world the utilities for creating art is many, educational resources exist in a vast measure as well, yet the number of artists and admirable pieces of art are still not much considerable, in fact and artist whose art is drawn from his independent thoughts and ideas, is a true artist, we must greaten our insight and in order to achieve this, there is no other way than finding the true self and the answer to this question; what would you share with your world?

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Please describe the intention behind your art. How do you successfully express this intention?

Thank you for this opportunity. In my opinion, art is an innate effort, a self-rewriting in a delicate form to discover the world; I work because I believe in creation, each form of art, in the flesh of a strike, is a teacher and a culture, in case it reaches the true result. You can be an ordinary citizen and live a good life, but I can’t, maybe I must see most of the issues I’m surrounded with clearer through the perspective of art using the chance I have by the life I live, and share my gained possession by my artistic insight with the rest of the world.

Can you talk a little about your formative years as an artist?

I started photography with much passion at the beginning of 2012. At first, I chose social documentary photography (social pathology) like many other colleagues of mine, because of my geographical, cultural and social conditions, but in the past two years, I have increased my focus and studies on contemporary documentary issues and staged-art every once in a while. I held a solo photo exhibition in 2016, participated in numerous group photo exhibitions; I’ve participated in many festivals and competitions globally, won prizes, received admirations and have been introduced as the honorable participant of many other contests, some are: International Sony Photography Awards 2018, SIPAContest 2018, HIPAA, and The International Photographic Salon of Japan… Long be short, I have been quite active!

What themes does your art focus on and how are they reflected through your Iranian background?

Iran is an ancient land with a history of true artists, poets and philosophers. Most of Iranian artists have a contentbased insight (not only aesthetical) for issues concerning the Existence, earth and matters of self knowledge, in fact this type of space of thought is a reminder of a natural Iranian heritage of ideology originated in our ancestors such as Hafez, which currently exists clearly within my and all other Iranian artists’ works. In my recent (contemporary documentary and stagedart) works, I represent my Iranian content through a western formation. My work is a combination of these two elements.

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How does your work pose questions about gender, identity and space?

I have generally focused on issues with human origination; the dominant system over society enforces cultures and contracts on people, which is the reason that humans’ sexual identity also runs under the influence of social factors and not just individual factors. Truth be told, in Iran, identity and sexuality are under the strict influences of religious contracts and each individual is obligated to act upon the religious demands, therefore, the female identity, according to this way of treatment in the religious organization, has certain limits in behavior, expectations and templates.

Where did you get your imagery from (What, if any, sources did you use)?

I have a professional photographing camera which I have purchased personally by my private costs. I have narrowed my models and travels down to my siblings and nearby locations due to my improper financial conditions. I rent the necessary gear that I need for my work advancement. In Iran, Art has lost its sacred definition and not a single organization goes through the trouble of showing a little support for the artists while tons of fake and unreal governmental low-level custom-built artists (!) are intensively supported by funds and materials.

I realized you return to your childhood memory with the photograph “My Mother”, while also commenting on today’s contemporary society in Iran with your more documentary images. In the Arab society “Mother” or “ “ has a significant poetic meaning. Could talk about this poesy in the Contemporary Iranian society?

Yes, it’s absolutely correct; “Mother” or “ “ has a divine meaning also in Iran, because this reaction (motherly) has a biological-genetic origination and it cannot be limited neither geographically nor culturally, mother is mother everywhere with dignity, patience and kindness in her inner and outer self even if in the homeless folks’ camp and in the harshest circumstances. Mother is the sweetest and rarest being in the world ever created, someone who loves with no expectations. I believe that if I’m ever to create a true work of art from myself in this world, it will for sure be originated in my family.

How similar do you feel it is to the Arab representation?

If you mean my “My Mother” work, I sense, “a lot”! Because this piece of art has a middle-eastern point of view for the Women and not just Iranian; clothing, dignity and purity inside, reminds the cultural, behavioral and geographical similarities between a Kurd, an Arab and a Persian mother and vice versa. An Arab mother has the special motherly passion and sensitivity just as an Iranian mother which is the outcome of passage though years of difficulty and pain.

Calligraphy has a history of being a substitute for figural representation in Iranian art and Islamic art in general. What role does Photography instead play in your art?

In my idea, photography is a newborn child in Iran; artists have failed to advance side by side with the world in this era except the documentary field, in which case this lack of advancement doesn’t necessarily have an individual root and can be because of the infirmity for introduction and production of the required proper fields of education for photography by the government and the people.

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What was the influence on your work or the way in which it was made?

In manners of form and the way of expression, I have created my work under the influence of contemporary insight, which is growing in the west, but its concept is Social-experimental; stability, silence, minimalism and implicit content by center pointing compositions and a boundless message which according to Roland Barthes, “Studium” is one of the factors of this piece of art.

Given the growing exposure of your artwork to a Western audience, what role would you like to see your work have as a part of the discourse on Iranian and Arab women?

To me, this piece of work is like paying my share of tribute to Iranian and Arab mothers, “My Mother” is the reflection of an Iranian mother and an Arab mother with common historical and cultural origins, but this is not the reach of the idea I’ve had behind this photo, matters such as sexual limitations and sanctions, lack of freedom to show and introduce the Women as an independent and respected identity are also parts of the ideology behind this photo. “Studium” is one of the factors of this piece of art.

They say if you could be anything but an artist, don’t be an artist. What career are you neglecting right now by being an artist?

It’s a tough question which I have never thought through, though physics and cosmology have always been my favorite majors in case art wasn’t a part of my life. -Nevertheless art has deprived me of many things in life but art is my passion and there is no way I can let go of it.

What current series are you working on?

Currently I’m in the pre-production stage of a staged-art collection, which is focused on crowdedness and bewilderment of the new age and a short film with an artistic point of view will be in my future actions to take.

Do you have any upcoming shows or collaborations?

Not any particular group projects, though concerning last year’s earthquake of Kermanshah, west of Iran, I have recently uploaded a documentary photo collection on my lensculture profile, due to the unsupported artist society, including myself, I vaguely see a future of exhibition or manifestation for my artistic activities.

I most certainly appreciate your attention and support for Iranian arts and artists.

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Mariano Alvarez

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MULTIDIMENSIONAL ASYMMETRY Mariano’s compositions transition through universes, multiple chords, climates and textures. Classical music, contemporary, concrete, electronic, jazz, blues, rock, generating complex visual harmonies.

In ink on freehand paper, Alvarez works hard and organic lines that transmit melodies which intertwine over the rhythm of endless directed energies.

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Please describe the intention behind your art. How do you successfully express this intention?

In my opinion, the intention of all artistic creation is always about communication. In my particular case, it acquires a conscientiological character. The goal for all my productions is to awaken consciousness, mine and that of my small and great community.

Can you talk a little about your formative years as an artist?

My artistic training begins at an early age in El ChocĂłn, Provincia de NeuquĂŠn in Patagonia Argentina with my parents Hugo and Silvia who gave me musical and visual training in an environment without television. That was very important to develop my imagination and creativity, maybe later my training in technical school contributed, but I think the origin of my inspiration is located in El ChocĂłn, the hydroelectric dam in the middle of the desert, surrounded by the strength of the natural combined with monumental engineering works. In this time my home was the cultural center of town, where engineers, artists and workers from different parts of the world came to meet. Later, Buenos Aires gave me its great diversity that is very important for a curious and self- taught person like me.

You transfer musical compositions to graphics, generating complex visual harmonies. How do you turn this into an artistic expression?

Artistic expression is an inner journey that I travel both in music and in the drawing simultaneously. I try to create something that does not exist in the planet in which I live.

Never planning the composition in advance. It responds to internal movements with references but always in an experimental direction.

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NOVEMBER 18’ multidimensional asymmetry MARIANO ALVAREZ

Your work is very technical in a certain regard, as it plays with complex compositions of lines, parallels, connections and more. It often resembles a complex architectural plan, but without an easy-to-find gravity center in its 3-dimensional layout. What’s most compelling to me though is that you combine simplicity with complexity by giving shape and dimension to your 2D drawings but then projecting them on a very simple plane by drawing several connected lines. Can you talk about that?

I believe in the multidimensionality of consciousness, that is, the capacity that each and every human being has to leave his physical body with lucidity. As consciousnesses we are connected and crossed by a multitude of complex energies, connected at the same time as a great collective consciousness. Our material universe is crossed by sound waves, thermal, transmission. Imagine the extraphysical universe or thought ... Somehow this influences my work, generating plans in different dimensions that are not governed by the laws of physics or traditional geometry. I do not draw something that I know but nevertheless it could be expressing many things. Extraterrestrial DNA chains.

Mariano, you are a composer from Buenos Aires, Argentina. We understand your inspiration of musical compositions, but what we find intriguing is this architectural geometry. How does your inspiration relate to your space or city? How does your artistic production include geometry, math, music compositions and the drawing process? Can you describe that for our readers?

This experiment as I call it started 20 years ago and continues to evolve every day. The compositions arise as the line advances. I let myself go but with a routine rigor. I do a composition every day or every two days depending on the size. Freehand work to avoid the conditioning of any tool, but there are mathematical proportions, laws of geometry and composition that are present. In addition Buenos Aires, the city where I live today, is a wonderful and complex city, inhabited by many people who come and go, by thousands and thousands of consciences and thoughts traveling at a speed faster than light. That can be chaotic but for me it is very inspiring They say if you could be anything but an artist, don’t be an artist. What career are you neglecting right now by being an artist?

Be a civil engineer, architect, builder or urban planner.

Technician in the layout of spacecraft and some devices that are used to neutralize possible atomic detonations by the unsuspecting governments of the planet Earth.

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How does drawing inspire you to compose your music?

With its absolute freedom in parallel to a patient technical dedication.

What current projects are you working on?

I record albums with my band “Bestia planete”, I write aexercise and work with rigor, performing a daily routine.

What is your favorite genre of music to listen to while working?

Mainly to Frank Zappa.

Do you have any upcoming shows or collaborations?

In music we are planning a show with Napoleón Murphy Brock, member of The Mothers of Invention one of the bands of Zappa for the month of March here in Buenos Aires. As for the plastic arts trying to reach with my art to different places on planet Earth. To get started.

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Jonathan Irawan

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NACRE

Jonathan is a part of Pulpo Collective, a team of international and multidisciplinary designers and interaction artists that strive on pushing boundaries of art and design through new digital philosophies and mediums. Together with Lalin Keyvan, Nikos Argyros, Noor El-Gewely, Firas Safiedden and Mehmet Berk Bostanci, they envision future scenarios, and question how can design as a practice can resolve challenges of the future, addressing both the physical realm our urban habitats and natural environments, as well as changes in society. The core principle of this ideology is to incorporate digital technologies at multiple scales in our work - from data collection at an urban or territorial scale to sensors and microcontrollers in programmable machines at the intersection of architecture, installation and interactive technologies.

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NOVEMBER 18’ Jonathan, you are an Architect, Computational Designer and Photographer. What kind of education or training helped you develop your skill set?

I have 5 years of formal education as an Architect. An Architecture Degree exposes you to so many other disciplines and streams related to art, design and humanities, continually shaping your passion and identity as a creative. I’ve been very lucky to have had the opportunity to study and gain perspectives from various parts of the world which drives me to continually adapt and gain new skills.

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Please describe the intention behind your art. How do you successfully express this intention?

Our intention is to raise the awareness of the users about the natural world around us, and translate data collected from the fluctuating natural systems of our given site. The installation must not only be beautiful but also provoke its audience to take action. We have extracted logic and forms from biology and augmented them in a way that would allow the audience to see nature in a different light.

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You are a member of the Pulpo Collective, Could you introduce this collective and tell us more about your position in Pulpo?

Our collective is composed of international and multidisciplinary designers and interaction artists that met during our Masters of Advanced Architecture, at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia in Barcelona. This is a centre of research and education, which encourages the next generation of designers and architects to envision future scenarios, and how we can design for the challenges which lie ahead - addressing both the physical realm of our urban habitats and natural environments, as well as changes in society. Another core principle of this ideology, which we continue to embody, is to incorporate digital technologies at multiple scales in our work - from data collection at an urban or territorial scale to sensors and microcontrollers in programmable machines. In general our methodology towards design and fabrication is a process of continuous testing and prototyping, until we achieve a feasible outcome.

My role in the collective is one that is multifaceted, jumping around being a creative director to help coordinate and consolidate the various aspects involved, as well as a computational designer in the technical design and fabrication of our proposal.

The project “Nacre� was inspired by the stories of the place Barangaroo. Please tell our readers a short version of this story.

This installation was inspired by the stories of the place Barangaroo. Our installation aims to unify the the Aboriginal history of the site with the challenges we face today.

Barangaroo is named after a powerful Cammeraygal leader of the Eora Nation at the time of European colonisation. The fisherwomen of the Warrane people played an important role in their community, as they were the main providers of fish for their clan - using a simple black wood canoe known as a Nawi. The Aboriginal people predominantly led a nomadic lifestyle, and as a consequence of that did not leave many physical traces on the land. However we know that this site was an important gathering place due to the shell middens that have been found here in archaeological digs during the construction of the new Barangaroo urban development.

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“Nacre” is reminiscent of an ocean rock, mollusks or coral. Its design reflects a strong connection to nature and a hidden underwater world. It also interacts actively with the public. Could you reveal the mystery about the “Nacre” installation? Where did your inspiration for it come from?

The inspiration and ideas were strongly driven by motives of the story above. The sea shell geometry is incorporated into our design. Both molluscs and coral reefs contain calcium carbonate and are at risk due to ocean acidification, as this slows down the calcification process. Although corals may seem like durable rocks, they are very fragile and easily damaged by direct and indirect threats from human activity.

The lighting of the “Nacre” installation is actuated by the data collected from the changing levels of the tide.

Although this illumination in itself does not counteract the effects of climate change, it does raise attention for it. Do you aim to interact with nature using advanced technologies? Do you think that humans will be able to be in total control of nature using advanced technologies?

Could you explain your artistic research about this?

Our education has geared our thinking towards discovering and breaking the unknowns between the physical and natural world. We constantly strive to research and find new ways of interaction with nature to extract information, learn and understand its processes within our daily lives. Technology is a major part of that exploration and acts solely as an enabler to our endeavors. What is important however, is the initial approach and questioning of specific aspects in nature and how that might inform the main messages of our works. We are all research driven and academics by nature, which allow us to structure the design process in a accountable way.

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NOVEMBER 18’ Your process includes lighting, sculpture, advanced computational design, algorithms and other programs and techniques. How can you describe your complex artistic production and technique for our readers? How does the Pulpo team complete your process?

The setup of our team was actually quite complex. We were 6 artists who were based in 4 different locations (London, Barcelona, Australia and Turkey). In order for constant development and progress to occur, we set aside specific times during the week to catch up and discuss major issues usually achieved using Google Hangouts or other various video conferencing tools. Each person then takes away specific tasks to resolve which feeds into the following discussion of future calls. All of us have similar skill sets but have specific passions in various aspects of the installation.

Responsibilities pertaining to individual components are usually taken by the group member who is most passionate or knowledgable in that sector, Computational Design, Fabrication, Project Management, Programming, or Physical Computing. The Pulpo team only works when all these differences come together harmoniously.

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Nacre is a big and complex installation. How do collaborators and partners participate in the realization of the project? How does Nacre, as an artistic installation, interact not only with the public but also with the business world where advanced ideas are a source of inspiration for the vision of the future?

We were very lucky to have had the support of sponsors and collaborators in the overall process to realise the installation.

We had the opportunity to work together with Protopixel, a Barcelona based lighting company to help us program the lights and hardware components of the installation. Showtex provided us not only with the technical support and diffusing material but also with the warehouse space to pre-assemble sections of our installation. We also partnered with HASSELL and Box & Dice to use their design knowledge and fabrication facilities. These interactions and collaborations bridge the gap between experimental methods and commercial applications, which is a necessary exchange for businesses to grasp new ideas and methods in their day to day operations.

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They say if you could be anything but an artist, don’t be an artist. What career are you neglecting right now by being an artist?

We are currently in the age of Big Data. Every interaction we have with our physical world is more often than not recorded or has some sort of digital trail. These trails form the basis of our social behavioural patterns. To understand these nuances, it is necessary to have the ability to process, analyse, visualize and communicate them in a manner that is digestible to the open public. I am currently fixated on this field and would hope to incorporate it more into my work or switch to become a Data Scientist or Analyst as a future career aspect.

What current project are you working on?

Currently as a group, Pulpo Collective is pursuing personal interests in our respective passions. We will hopefully get together again when a new opportunity arises which can become the platform to share all the new skills and knowledge that we have picked up in this time.

What is your favorite escape from busy London professional life to get new and fresh inspiration?

London is such an amazing place to find new ideas. There are countless cultural and artistic events and communities in so many different pockets of the city. It is also an amazing base to access the entirety of Europe to search for new perspectives.

Collective Pulpo in three words ?

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Anett Pósalaki

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GENDER

It is important how we accommodate our objects and environment in concepts, time and space. How our choices describes us. Photography is therapy, this is how we process our real and imaginary traumas, stories and identities. It’s a unbreakable bound, how life and art reflect on each other. For Anett Posalaki, te intimate reality, which includes her thoughts of gender constructions, is the basis on which she tries to solve the problem of relations inside and outside a personality.

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Please describe the intention behind your art. How do you successfully express this intention?

Your process includes a specific construction of the image, influenced by personal remembering. In other photographic works, you experiment with a mix of geometry, anatomy and photography to give another representation in this case of a portrait.

How can you describe that for our readers?

With my pictures, my goal is to define the term ’gender-free’ by exploring the spaces around me and by searching for related objects or life situations. It is a kind of self-definition or identity question. In my pictures I carry out a kind of research where, for example, I observe types of organisms that are able to multiply without male and female individuals, outlining that gender is not necessary for existence.

My pictures are like pieces of my personality, they have to be interpreted as a whole.

Each piece is able to describe a small detail about my personality and the constantly changing identity issues.

Can you talk a little about your formative years as an artist?

I graduated as a photographer at Moholy-Nagy Art University and after that I moved to Berlin, where the topic of gender is more vivid and upto-date. I worked in a gallery in Berlin (FKK Galerie) and participated in group exhibitions for example: FKK – Berlin’s The Blind Curator and The Family of No Man at Cosmos Arles.

Where did you get your imagery from (What, If any, Sources did you use)?

My interest in the subject started when I started to explore my own identity, and then I found an article on the Internet about women who live in Albania, called Sworn Virgins. Women who chose to live as men, because of social pressure or forced marriages, they decided to live as virgins and lead their life as men. From here came the question of comparison in my project.

Your work plays with placement of the images, memory, interaction between the inside and outside and its relation with the construction of personality. Much of this is filtered through imaginary in a relation with your personal life – like to build a statement of your research on a photographic process.

Can you talk about that?

My pictures are totally related to my own life, in fact this is the sort of self-definition that is constantly changing and I’m constantly learning new things about myself.

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They say if you could be anything but an artist, don’t be an artist. What career are you neglecting right now by being an artist?

In my childhood I wanted to be a pianist.

What current series are you working on?

I’m working on a visual diary and besides that I’m taking pictures of flowers as an act of remembering and I’m also trying myself in fashion photography.

What is your favorite genre of music to listen to while working?

Bonobo, Fakear, Bicep etc. music with a minimal vocal included.

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Christian Neuman

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THE END OF EVERYTHING AS YOU KNEW IT

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Christian Neuman’s art reveals a tumultuous world either in mid-formation or on the verge of destruction. Neuman’s pieces appear otherworldly, like anthropological relics from a former world glorified in distorted compositions. Amongst their abstract and destructive nature they point towards an undercurrent of opportunity, of optimism for a new world that is being rendered, with the artist capturing the perfect moment between the destruction of an old, and creation of a new world.

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NOVEMBER 18’ Christian Neuman, you are a writer, director and producer. Through your production company “Focusart”, you specialize in producing award winning experimental films, art film and art house cinema. Please tell us more about this artistic background.

What I like about film is that it brings so many aspects together and challenges you on many levels at the same time. You cannot make a film alone and bringing together the right people at the right moment for a specific project is an important part of the whole process. You need to channel different artistic energies into the same and best possible direction. This is very challenging, but an exciting part of making movies.

My first love was painting, so I believe that’s why I always start from visual ideas. A single image or still, that triggers further interest to call for a world and characters around it. The story and plot then fall in place too. For me personally, it is foremost the closed, unique world and atmosphere that remain from movies. The story is of course very important too, but the story and especially the plot line can be consumed and digested more directly. What I strive for is to try and give the audience a point of view experience; some sort of thinking pattern. I strive for this quality in painting too. It’s important to me, to create some sort of coherence in approach and expression, that becomes recognizable throughout different media.

I am more interested in art house cinema, as more commercial productions often put heavy focus on plot and allow less artistic freedom.

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Please describe the intention behind your art. How do you successfully express this intention?

Throughout the years of making art, I realized that my intentions changed. As the time of artistic expression and activity is obviously limited, one must make a choice. I strongly believe that each artist actually just has one main topic. A first big challenge is to find your topic. Once found it seems obvious. I understood that my ultimate topic is death or more precisely the cracks, or breaking points in the human attempt to cover up the absurdity of the human condition and culturally adopted value systems. It is that breaking point, where I like to take my movie characters to, and this is precisely that edge where my paintings start and dwell around.

Paintings are different though for me, as for me contemporary painting always refers to itself historically, and must be evaluated and seen from that perspective.

Can you talk a little about your formative years as an artist?

Studying is an important part of growing. When it comes to painting, I am less interested in the craft side of the art, but more in the intellectual and conceptual part. Art School can give you both, and gives you that exact freedom and time to find your topic and voice. After my undergraduate studies, I was hesitating between further studying painting or cinema.

I decided for the latter, but continued painting throughout the years. There is this raw quality and energy that I can only find in painting. Then again, working on this kind of approach and expression helped me to build my ideas for creating cinematographic worlds and writing scripts. For me, both art forms are very much linked to each other. They feed each other.

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NOVEMBER OCTOBER 18’ 18’ You are a winner of several awards (Winner Best Director Berlin ARFF Intl. Film Festival 2016, Winner Best Fantasy Short Film Los Angeles Independent Movie Awards 2015, Winner Honorable Mention “Experimental Forum” Film Festival Los Angeles 2016 and much more…). How did that very particular background and winning awards prepare you for your latest works?

Awards are nothing special but in cinema they can help you finance projects. I admire people that put their energy in bringing together art and make it available to an audience. Once a work is done, I often lose interest in it and move on to the next one. I’d very much like to change that habit, but maybe it is just a part of my process. That is why it is so important to have professionals taking care of the work and make sure that people actually see it.

Sometimes as filmmakers we make sense of things in our own lives through our work. What is the central point between your artistic perception and your close interest in dark drama, elevated horror and experimental art films?

I am more interested in the shadows that we throw standing in the sunlight. It is a choice and an approach. In painting I constantly try to define these aesthetics. In movies I constantly try to break my characters. I strive for simplicity and sharpness.

Romanticism is the big enemy, although I still sometimes fall into the trap.

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Where did you get your imagery from (What, If any, sources did you use)?

From everywhere and nowhere. I collect all the time. I used to feel very challenged by visiting museums because it made me feel so itchy to create work myself, that I could hardly enjoy the greatness of some works on display. With films I have this far less. Very few films actually keep on exciting me. I try not to draw from films when creating own work. That is of course impossible, but I still try. Life itself can give you much, but then again you cannot force it and it also takes a lot of energy. Living fully is in itself an art. I cannot do that. I need my energy to create artworks. I also believe that by now my inner image library is well filled and heavily conditioned by my sociocultural upbringing and past. I am aware that it is hard to break out of this defined image library to draw from. I am also Ok with that fact.

What are you working on next?

I am currently working on my first feature film project. It is a psychological thriller and stars Udo Kier, Amber Anderson and Jefferson Hall. The release is planned for 2019.

Do you have any upcoming shows or collaborations?

I will be showing some work at Luxembourg art week in November 2018.

I also have an upcoming exhibition planned at MobART gallery in Luxembourg city in February 2019.

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NOVEMBER 18’

Charlie Wayne

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THE JUNK FOOD LAST SUPPER Charlie’s work questions the identity and the place of reality in a world where fame, image and marketing are kings. The accumulation and proliferation of photographs in his artworks question the power of images in our society and echo the mass consumption mechanisms of our world. Each work can thus be seen as a lighting of the duality of the human, between image and identity, between passive consumption and a quest for truth.

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Please describe the intention behind your art. How do you successfully express this intention?

In everything I do I’m obsessed with the reality of things.

Fortunately, that does not prevent me from dreaming, but more than I can remember, I always try to find the true meaning of words and things! Because of my life experiences, I quickly learned that what is said, or what is shown, is often only a tiny part of the truth. This is reflected in my work. I question the identity and the place of reality in our world where fame, image and medias are kings.

Please describe the intention behind your art. How do you successfully express this intention?

In everything I do I’m obsessed with the reality of things.

Fortunately, that does not prevent me from dreaming, but more than I can remember, I always try to find the true meaning of words and things! Because of my life experiences, I quickly learned that what is said, or what is shown, is often only a tiny part of the truth. This is reflected in my work. I question the identity and the place of reality in our world where fame, image and medias are kings.

Can you talk a little about your formative years as an artist?

I was immersed in the world of art from childhood. Having spent long isolated months at home for health reasons, I spent the time mentally exploring the world. I started drawing, painting, playing music, and very quickly, doing photography with my first camera that was offered to me by my parents when I was 11. I was very young faced with death, absence, loneliness and rejection. It certainly built me as ​​ I am today. I developed a particular attraction for psychology, philosophy, and the visual arts while conducting a biologist training.

Having completed my PhD, I started a scientific career while continuing to create and train myself. I kept my creations for myself, as a loophole, and I took courses in art history offered by the MoMA of New York and the Pompidou Center of Paris. I also had the chance to learn about screen printing with a recognized artist, Janusz Stega. I think I trained as an artist more through life experiences, my curiosity about the world and the hours to work in my studio. It’s only been 4 years that I dared for the first time to show my work. But this became for me a necessity that put in perspective all my life!

Your work is highlighting the duality of the human, between image and identity, between passive consumption and a quest for truth represented in a very graphic and commercial environment. How do you turn this into an artistic expression?

I used to work in health marketing. I draw my material in fragments of real life, Internet imagery, newspapers, movies…, I plan on my studio wall, and I photograph from various angles in order to symbolically capture their energy in the manner of souls’ thieves. Imperfects like humans, deformed by the camera angle, more or less intense according to the exposure, I use these hundreds of pictures as many pixels I assemble in mosaic to recreate the final image. By this means imposing a double reading, I invite the viewer to both movement and introspection: if the overall superficial picture is made to be quickly seen at distance (as we sometimes fly over our own life), the deeper meaning is perceptible as we approach it, until we touch the real.

Each work can thus be seen as a lighting of the duality of the human, between image and identity, between passive consumption and a quest for truth.”

Where did you get your imagery from (What, if any, sources did you use)?

I find my imagery in the representation that we have done for centuries, in art, politics, propaganda, advertising, newspapers ... I also happen to photograph the man of the street and my everyday life. When I started presenting my work, it was often noticed that it was tinged with a dark new aesthetic. It is true that I work contrasts, noise, and that black and white remains my primary expression, as for freezing history. Color, when present, intervenes only later, to accentuate certain features, or to add a symbolism to the whole.

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Your work is very visual, plays with composition of the images, interaction between history and the actual present. You create intellectual layers for your work, where the branding and advertising part of your work is what can be perceived as a first layer but then a call to spirituality and humanity as a second – thus having double questioning for the viewer, each one in a different dimension but pointing to the same artistic research.

Can you talk about that?

The human is full of perplexity. When I was doing photography, I refused to make portraits because I always considered that the human is a complex whole in perpetual internal movement: so how to fix the entropy? This is probably why I only realized portraits of artists in their performance. There was a particular angle there. It was not a question of depicting human nature, but an intention at a given moment. Today, as a visual artist, I am lucky to be able to represent this complexity. Maybe my approach was also influenced by my past as a scientist: when you study an organism, you sometimes need to approach the cellular scale that composes it to truly understand this entity.

Your production includes a specific portraits selection in a “repeat” process. In other works, you experiment with a mix of logos, commercial products and other signs to give another representation in this case of big scale portraits and reproductions of historical paintings. How can you describe that for our readers?

The accumulation and proliferation of photographs in my artworks question the power of images in our society and echo the mass consumption mechanisms of our world. We are overwhelmed with images in our daily lives. Often, they influence us more than they inform us. I think the repetitive composition also expresses an obsession. My work can be seen as a book: we are attracted by the cover, and if it challenges us, we begin to explore the different chapters.

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Your questioning about the sociological sense of freedom, politics and religion has a direct impact on the way you construct your graphic combinations.

Could you tell us about the actual present then? Can your art go through even more political and religious paths to reach the truth? How far can you go with you art?

I think that paradoxically, although the Western world has never been more secure (in the sense that it is less subject to wars than in previous centuries), we are swamped with violent images used for all purposes: information, political campaigns, religious struggles, advertising campaigns ... We live in an environment that may seem hostile and in which we must fight to win or preserve our individual freedoms.

Humans sometimes tend to come close to extreme positions to feel reassured. To feel like part of a clan. By showing the dark side, I want my art to reflect this paradox. May it be a testimony of our present. A manifesto in honor of the human in his best. A celebration of life. And in any case a source of debate.

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What was the influence on your work or the way in which it was made?

I think that beyond all that we were able to discuss during this interview about my approach, my work is influenced by advertising, popular imagery and cinema. The frame of my works could be likened to a film. Even if I use the opposite process: the part of a projected image to decline to infinity on a physical medium. As to give him life.

They say if you could be anything but an artist, don’t be an artist. What career are you neglecting right now by being an artist?

I have a phD in neuroscience and I worked for 15 years doing research and supporting health facilities and pharmaceutical companies. It’s been 4 years since I devote myself exclusively to art and I must say that if I can live my art, I do not feel like giving up anything! A moment ago you have to accept that need. That of creating. I do not think I could go back now!

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What current series are you working on?

I’m working on a series that explores the true hidden meaning of tales. I am convinced that in popular culture, news items, serial killers, and human monsters have replaced the fables of our childhoods and the imaginary fireside monsters. They allow us to tame our archaic fears. Moreover, by taking the place of the evil creatures of legends in our minds, “the� serial killer, image of the danger towards the community, strengthens the community itself: it is by opposing the evil it represents, that individuals recognize themselves as belonging to the same group, that of good. And we gather in crowds during white marches and demonstrations of support for the victims and their families

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NOVEMBER 18’ What is your favorite genre of music to listen to while working?

It’s funny that you ask me this question. It’s the music that got me interested in doing photography. The first time I was captivated by a photographic work was during a concert whose visuals had been created by the Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn. Music plays an important part in my life. It has always been a bulwark, a costume that envelops me in dark moments and accompanies me in happy moments. Beyond that, I am convinced that no energy is created, and no energy is lost. This also applies to creative energy. So thank you to the artists who accompany me in my creative nights.

I listen to a lot of cold wave, pop, electro and atmospheric music. I also listen to a lot of French post-punk bands from the late ‘70s and’ 80s. Right now I am discovering a passion for several Icelandic bands.

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Do you have any upcoming shows or collaborations?

I am in the middle of a creative tunnel, and my last exhibition this year took place in Venice where I presented my memorial to the victims of Charles Manson. And without revealing too much, I should be on show this autumn at the International Price of Contemporary Art of Monaco, under the honorary presidency of SAR Princess Caroline of Hanover. This is an important event and I am very proud to be here!

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Chiara Sgatti

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THE WHITE SPOT

Sgatti’s work is to tell stories, to spread concepts and ideas. Chiara loves creating new worlds, new situations, new characters, and she always aims at delivering her own, original message - although she understands that ‘perfection’ is an impossible task.

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Please describe the intention behind your art. How do you successfully express this intention?

My intentions are mainly to deliver an idea, while at the same time creating a different world. I usually spend lots of time to refine my characters, my environment and every little detail of my world so that it stays consistent and believable.

Can you talk a little about your formative years as an artist?

I have been studying in an art school, the high school Leon Battista Alberti in Florence, Italy.

Then I have been studying industrial design for one year at the ISIA, always in Florence, but I realized I didn’t like it much, so I came here to London, UK, where I started studying animation for the first time at the London College of Art for my BA, and then at the Royal College of Art for my Master degree in Animation. In general, I have always been drawing, ever since I was a child, and I never stopped!

What’s your favorite part about being an animator and motion graphics designer?

I guess that moment when you are not only mechanically drawing frame by frame, but when you feel like you are actually giving life to your character. And obviously that moment you replay your scene and it magically moves, never stops to amaze me.

Films can be a very exciting way to talk to people: they can be very visceral, direct and emotional, or very cerebral and grandiose, almost inscrutable. How do you get the viewer’s attention through your illustrations and animations?

I usually try to use an emotional approach to express much more complex idea. It doesn’t work all the time, but I think it give several layers or reading to a film.

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Where did you get your imagery from (What, if any, sources did you use)?

I usually take pictures when I go around, or sketches, or even just mental notes. I also love browsing websites like the National Geographic or the one of Nasa. Also, I have a soft spot for imagery of conspiracy theories and aliens, but I don’t know how much they affected my style.

Your work is about Knowledge as a complex system of simpler memories, linked one to another. Just like multiple layers of colors put one on top of the other create a complex design in simply designed software. Do you create then your storyboards and build your artistic statement with the same process as a graphic design procedure? Can you talk about that?

My storyboard, and my stories in general are built starting from a complex but singular idea, and then I start to build on top that idea, adding humanity and some emotional connections. So the answer is yes, I use layers to build my stories, but I place them in a different order. Complex ideas are at the core, while simpler ideas, connected one to each other, help to explain that main idea.

Your productions include drawing, digital painting, illustration and more. How can you describe your production process for our readers?

To make animations, I usually start with writing.

I write down my idea, my character, my world, until they do look real and consistent enough in my eyes. Then I start drawing some concept frames, pick my colour palettes and create characters. After that, storyboarding, re-writing and re-drawing concepts go all together towards creating a satisfactory animatic, my main reference in order to start the proper production. From the animatic on, everything is mainly focused into animating and editing, while at the same time juggling my sound designer and my actors.

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How much focus do you place on life drawing or realism in your practice? Do you see more artistic improvement while working from imagination or from life?

They say if you could be anything but an artist, don’t be an artist. What career are you neglecting right now by being an artist?

I think life drawing is essential to learn, because when you draw something you pay attention to things you usually don’t notice. I guess your brain makes a different effort, and drawing from imagination is basically drawing from memories of something you didn’t pay too much attention to, so I think it the best improvements I ever made were when I drew from life, or a photographic reference.

I guess I have always wanted to be a physicist, so if I haven’t had the chance, I would have been studying physics right now.

What games, movies, or other media inspire you the most?

In terms of animation, I love the work of Studio Ghibli and Disney. From the top of my head, thinking about live action, I love the work of Quentin Tarantino, Park Chan-wook and the early Woody Allen. Aesthetically, I appreciated the movie the Fall by Tarsem Singh and Il Racconto dei Racconti by Matteo Garrone, and the video games Final Fantasy XIV and XV,

by Square Enix. In terms of storytelling, Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri by Martin McDonagh and the comic Fullmetal Alchemist

by Hiromu Harakawa.

What current animations are you working on?

I have just finished my animation for the last year at the Royal College of Art, entitled The Thing I Left Behind, and I am currently working for a commissioned project, Outside the Box. Do you have any upcoming shows or collaborations?

I do have a screening for The White Spot in Lago, Italy, and another one which I can’t talk about, here in London.

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Marilina Alvarez

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I DON’T WANT TO SAY ANYTHING BUT A reflection on the daily sport of talking about others is a focus in some of Marilina Alvarez’s work. This comes to life in her short film, which highlights a moment in the life of three wardrobe stylists who work in the film commercials industry in Buenos Aires. Labor relations mix with friendship and complications ensue..

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Please describe the intention behind your art. How do you successfully express this intention?

Can you talk a little about your formative years as an artist?

I love films, and I love telling stories. I like to write stories about ordinary people, trying not to judge them. I don’t want to do a film showing “bad” or “good” people, I just want to focus on a story in particular, when something happens, and watch the characters living it. I try not to force the stories. The first idea appears, sometimes like a whole piece, sometimes in parts. It’s a story where something happens. Other times I found a subject, and I let the idea flow in my mind, and one day a character appears with a story. It depends. However, I like stories that reflect something that could happen to me, to you, to anyone, just ordinary stories, about what we do everyday. And behind it, maybe it is a question, about why they/we are like we are.

I have worked for several years in the field of film production and direction before to get a Scholarship and studied Film Direction in CIEVYC(2 years) , Psychology in Buenos Aires University (4 years) and Graphic Design (Da Vinci Design School).

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Sometimes as filmmakers we make sense of things in our own lives through our work. Do you feel you do that in ”I DON’T WANT TO SAY ANYTHING, BUT”?

Yes, they are a commercial film wardrobe crew, working, a lot, many times together, many stories are talked in motorhomes and free moments behind camera. They work and they also live, so sometimes working activities mix with their private life.

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You manage to capture extraordinary moments of emotion and drama with your characters in “I DON’T WANT TO SAY ANYTHING, BUT”.

How do you manage these very personal exchanges?

Thank you! It sound nice. Well, I think the talent made a great job. We met 3 times, before the filming day, to talk and practice with them. It was very nice and I changed the script too in some details. I loved to make the story grow and find the best way to tell it.

What current films are you working on?

I´m directing PASAJE DE IDA, a television documentary about Spanish Emigration to Argentina with Arija Studio. I’m almost ready to film my second short film, called “Libres”/“Free People, about monogamy, truth, lies, and freedom. And I’m writing my first feature film, “Al fin” - “At the End”, about that secure felling that money makes you feel when we have it.

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Where did you get your imagery from (What, If any, sources did you use)?

Daily life is my main imagery source, being open to live lots of stories, and to listen to others life stories, I like to talk about some subjects that maybe are difficult to talk about. It’s something uncomfortable, something we don’t realize when we are doing it..

What was the influence on your work or the way in which it was made?

I like Doris Dorrie, as a script writer and director very much. I’m a fan of her work. I think she tells very deep subject through ordinary life stories. I also like Pedro Almodóvar because he is a genius of comedy, suffering, acting and color image. It was filmed only in one day and with an extremely low budget. That’s something interesting too. We had one place, one day, 3 actors. For me it was an amazing experience.

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NOVEMBER 18’ You’re questioning about identity and the feeling of satisfying the ego, to be eager to adjust reality so it matches our ego - satisfaction has a direct impact on the viewer’s personal perception of daily life. What is the relation between your short film and Buenos Aires society? How do you choose your subjects and society codes? Please, tell us more.

There is a lot of competition and hypocrisy in our society, and sometimes it’s not easy to get a job in commercial film industry. You have to know someone that give you the right contact to get in. And it’s not easy, not matter what have you studied or not. Contacts and what people say about you, it’s everything. I like to talk about subjects I know very well, and I have been working for more than twenty years in commercial film industry. We work long hours, everything happens behind camera. I like to focus in human behavior and all that we do not realize consciously we do.

How do you approach the editing process? Do you also edit yourself? How can you describe your production process for our readers?

When I was a student I used to edit myself, but not now. I found an editor, Marcelo Rey, and we are working together.

It’s very nice, because he understands perfectly what I want.

We meet once, and we talk about what I want, and then the material comes, and goes, and one day it’s finished.

In this editing process, Betty’ character appeared, the seamstress, that talks with Paul by phone. So we decided to detail her, writing and recording her voice, with an experienced actor such as Pablo Ribba, who was working with us in the Art Direction, and helping in the production team.

They say if you could be anything but an artist, don’t be an artist. What career are you neglecting right now by being an artist?

I think I would be an Organic Biodynamic Farmer. I love to grow healthy vegetables and I’m interested in it very much.

Do you have any upcoming shows or collaborations?

Yes, “I don’t want to say anything, but”… will be in September at a Fashion Festival in the Dominican Republic and in October in San Martin Theatre in Buenos Aires.

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Live Scuplture

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